Americans will have to wait until the year 2080 before Europe finally melts, the European Environmental Agency warned. According to the agency’s first report on climate change, in another seventy-six years the legendary goblin of global warming could claim victory over the rotting continent, having virtually eradicated winters and melted more than three quarters of the Swiss Alps’ glaciers.
Or not. The EEA report makes judicious use of words like “might,” “could,” and “may.” How scientific.
Citing temperature measurements over the past 100 years, the EEA claims that temperatures in Europe have risen by an average of 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit. In an a science fiction novel 100 years of data might be significant, but here on Earth the global climate normally changes over tens of thousands of years. The EEA report failed to mention that the Northern Hemisphere has been covered with ice for 80 percent of the Earth’s history, that ice ages typically last a few hundred thousand years followed by 10,000-12,000 year periods of rapid warmth, and that the last ice age ended approximately 11,000 years ago. Why clutter political propaganda with relevant facts?
According to EEA statements, elevated carbon dioxide levels are largely responsible for the anticipated apocalyptic effects of global warming, and the Industrial Revolution is to blame for this (and for the increased life expectancy of those pesky humans). But nature makes modern industry look almost as lazy as one of its union employees: while nature contributes a robust 200 billions tons of carbon dioxide annually to the atmosphere, industry coughs-out a mere 7 billion. When it comes to producing the evil “greenhouse gas,” humans are quite obviously slacking-off. In order to meet the 2080 deadline for the melting of Europe, humans everywhere are going to have to step-up production–and fast.
So please: go burn some coal. It’s for a good cause.
